HOLLY’S FUNERAL WAS IN KIMMERSTON, in the church where Joe and Charlie had first talked to Judith Sinclair. Vera had expected her parents to take their daughter’s body home, but they’d said Holly would want to be remembered here, where she’d been so happy, so satisfied at work.
‘She was always rather a restless child,’ Raymond Clarke said. ‘A little apart. Rather driven. Other people never quite lived up to her expectations. She found her true home in the police service.’ He was a thin, quiet man, with Holly’s face and Holly’s reticence. The mother was larger, more outgoing. She hugged Vera when they first met, then immediately apologized, for being so forward.
‘I’m so sorry, Inspector. I don’t know what came over me. But my daughter admired you so much.’
Vera had been expecting anger from the parents, a desire for vengeance, directed not perhaps at Daniel Rede, but at the Kimmerston team and Vera in particular. It would have been much easier to accept than their forgiveness. They were Christians and had made, Vera could tell, a conscious decision to forgive her, to be kind. Somehow, their strength and understanding made her own guilt harder to bear.
The couple were staying in Holly’s flat, but they came first to the police station and that was where the meeting had taken place. They’d wanted, they said, to see where Holly had worked, where she’d been so content. Vera could hardly say that contentment hadn’t been the most obvious trait in their daughter’s character.
The mother, Joan, sat in Holly’s chair in the open-plan office. ‘It isn’t quite as I imagined,’ she said. ‘I was expecting more noise, more bustle.’
Vera didn’t know how to say that usually it would have been busier, but that the team were grieving. ‘We’re all feeling very quiet,’ she said in the end. ‘Very sad.’
Joan looked up and apparently on impulse, she invited Vera for supper. ‘Come to the flat tomorrow.’ It would be the evening before the funeral. Vera could hardly refuse. She felt she was responsible for their daughter’s death and she would have given them anything they asked.
‘Could I bring my sergeant? Joe Ashworth. Holly worked most closely with him.’ Vera didn’t think she could survive an evening alone with this gentle couple, who were struggling so hard to be generous in their grief. Rage against the injustice of a daughter lost would have been very much easier to bear.
‘Oh, of course, Holly spoke of him all the time.’
In the end, they survived the occasion better than Vera could have imagined. She wished she’d met Holly’s parents earlier. It might have helped her understand her officer better. They were earnest and principled. Holly had inherited that from them, but rebelled against their gentleness in her ambition and her desire for justice at any cost. And for success. Hers had been a black and white world. Theirs was a muted shade of grey.
The four of them sat round the pale wood table, eating a simple meal. There was wine, a good red, of which Joanna would have approved. Vera and Joe said very little. They listened to the parents remembering their daughter. By the end they were all weeping quietly but without embarrassment. Vera was weeping because now she understood the woman better than she had done when she was alive. She blamed herself for that. Her stubbornness. Her hard certainties.
The funeral service was quiet. Most of the people in the pews were colleagues. Philip Robson must have driven back from London to be there. He was sitting with Judith Sinclair, and Annie joined them just before the service started. Some of the Clarkes’ relatives had travelled up for the occasion. Katherine Willmore was in a pew at the back. Unobtrusive and alone. Vera thought that had taken courage. The county knew now that the Police and Crime Commissioner’s partner was a killer. The police officers in the church would recognize her. The hymns were traditional. Everything was very civilized, very polite, very reasonable.
Outside it had started to rain, a November drizzle, boring like the service. Vera suddenly wanted to shout out loud, to howl at the grey, overcast sky, to let the world know that Holly Clarke had not gone gentle into that dark night. She’d been fierce and strong and brave and she’d fought to the end.
But in the end, she had no right to express her opinion. Not here and now, though she might when she got drunk later with Joe. So, she went up to Raymond and Joan, hugged them first, and thanked them again. She offered them all the support the service could give. Then she got into her Land Rover and drove back to her cottage in the hills to grieve in her own way. There, she could howl to her heart’s content.